Existing Tenant Not Signing New Lease M to M

[Matthew Slaughter]

Hello All!  So, we've had a tenant for a couple of years in one of our duplexes.  She's paid on time, we've bumped the rent with each opportunity but have not bumped it to market rent, to respect the original lease in place by old owners.  We have been more than fair with the tenant.  A couple things have happened over the last 3 months and we're trying to get our head wrapped around our problem child. 

1) We changed to a new PM company.  Unfortunately, they were late with their walk through review and paperwork and sent the lease to the tenant to sign before we could review the walk through, which totally sucks.  So, after the tenant signed the new lease, we realized that her hoarding has become much worse and the apartment was disgusting so we didn't fully execute this lease.

2) We parted ways with that PM company and hired a new one. 

3) Due to the state of her apartment and upstairs tenants asking about a clause in our lease about pests and them not being responsible for the downstairs tenant (our problem child) if their apartment does attract pests, we sent the downstairs tenant a 30 day notice to clean the place up.

4) Downstairs tenant did not clean the place up within the 30 days so we provided her an extension and then she completed it.

5) After discussing this issue with both PM and Lawyer, we were told to just honor the 'terms' of the old lease until its expiration in October.  Terms meaning rent amount, duties and obligations and time.  But, send her a new month to month lease with those same terms and get her into a month to month then increase rent after October while keeping her in a month.  

6) Downstairs tenant has of course lambasted us and our PM on social media but has posted pictures cleaning her apartment, which proves we're working together.

7) She's had the new M to M lease for 1 full month and has not returned it with signature.

There's many more details that i'm leaving out because this would become a long winded post.  To sum it up, we made a mistake in hiring a PM who didn't execute their work correctly, and we made a mistake as landlords in not following the process correctly.  So we spoke with our lawyer and are trying to help the tenant stay in the place by keeping records of cleanliness and not evicting but also don't want to continue to be held on the line by the tenant and not signing her lease.  

How do we get her to sign her lease???

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Matthew Slaughter:

I think you're making a big mistake. She's not maintaining the property without a lot of effort. She's lambasting you and the PM online. Do you honestly think she will magically start to toe the line in the future?

She will continue to be a problem as long as she's there. She's below market and you have to deal with her nonsense. I would rescind the offer and get her out as quickly as possible. Clean the place up, rent it at market rate, use a lease you and the PM can agree on and enforce.